Where have I been?

Well, for 2 weeks I attended a training camp for work. It was fun, but we didn't have computers while we were there all day and upon getting home each day I was exhausted and pretty much went straight to sleep.

Meanwhile, I learned how to survive a plane crash in the desert from the camp. Pretty cool!

In other news, last Friday my mom and sister got a new puppy! My family has never had pets before (besides the occasional fish and the bunny rabbit I had for a few months when I was 8) so we were pretty stoked. She is totally adorable and so sweet!

Meet London!

The woman who owned her before needed to get rid of her because she travels often for work and was working long hours during the week so she couldn't spend time with London.

She is a toy maltese/poodle mix and she's 12 weeks old. She's so little! London loves to play, but is cool just chillin' too.

She loves people and gets so excited when anyone comes over. Every time I go to my mom's house she runs up to me as soon as I get in the door and she'll put her paws up for me to pick her up! It melts my heart.

My sister Mallory came over the first day and we all got to hang out.

This sweet puppy is perfect for our family. I'm so happy God decided for her to come bless us. I love this little girl!

A Navy and Gray Bridal Shower

My BFF Kelly is getting married in October and she selected me to be her maid of honor! :) Therefore it was my duty to throw a bridal shower which I was super excited to do. I held it at my house and I can't wait to share all the details with you! I already shared the yarn wreath I made for the occasion.

Here's the beautiful, bride-to-be!

Kelly and I have known each other since junior year of high school. We were in band together and we have been inseparable ever since!

Kelly and I have had so much fun over the years. She will go along with any scheme I cook up and she loves a good dance party just as much as I do.

For drinks, my mom made homemade iced tea and we also had pink lemonade and water. I bought the beverage dispensers at Target and I was really happy with them! They work well and they are inexpensive at $20.

Then we had the food setup.

For veggies, we cut up broccoli and bell peppers. We also had baby carrots and cherry tomatoes with peppercorn ranch dip.

We also served pineapple, cantaloupe, honey dew, grapes, watermelon, blueberries and strawberries. Five servings of fruits and veggies a day keeps the doctor away!

I bought chunk cheese on sale and my sister cut it into cubes and we set out crackers with it. I made pasta salad as well.

There were chips and dip.

The cakes turned out perfectly. We ordered 2 of them at Publix (I love Publix cakes!) and I was impressed with their work. I asked for them to base the cakes on the wedding invitation. We also got some cupcakes too - half chocolate and half vanilla.

And I leave you with this: 

My super cool, little sister McKenna created this little cheese man. I was charmed. :)

DIY Bridal Shower Wreath

Last Saturday I hosted a bridal shower for my BFF Kelly at my house. I will be sharing more on that later, but for now I wanted to show you the bridal shower wreath that I made for it.

I had a straw wreath similar to this one, but bigger.

Kelly's wedding colors are gray, navy and white so I wrapped the wreath in gray yarn and decorated it with navy, white and gray flowers. I also added two little birdies to imitate the ones she has on her invitations.

I hung it on the door and voila! A welcoming wreath for a bridal shower.

It's amazing what you can do with some felt, yarn and a glue gun. :)

Yay for Contact Paper!

Almost 2 years ago, I found a few of these boxes at Target:

I liked the shape and size so I grabbed some and took them home with me, but I was not thrilled about the color. I love green, but this shade was not jiving with me. However since they were only $2.50 a piece I figured I'd come up with something to do later. I didn't know later would be 2 years, but hey.

I found some super cute contact paper at Marshall's. It's from the Macbeth collection and it was $5.99 for 2 rolls and I knew that I could finally conquer the ugly green box.

Voila!

Since it was contact paper, it made this bad boy super easy to cover. Now I have it sitting on my kitchen counter to contain all of my paper clutter that I really should sort through, but somehow never make the time to... (Please tell me I'm not the only one)

I love how well it goes with the dining room! :)

I pretty much love it. :)

Ikea Love

After I first moved into the house, I bought these cheap bookshelves at Target. They were only about 20 dollars each and I was happy that they would provide a lot of storage.

I have enjoyed them for over 2 years, but I always wanted some bookshelves that were a little taller and that were sturdier because these were pretty wonky (that's a technical term). I just had to wait to save up some money for them.

I finally decided that I wanted the same look, but taller with more shelves so I went for the Ikea Billy bookshelf. I bought them when they were on sale for $49.99 each and I was happy about that. I actually ordered them back when I ordered my new living room chairs from Ikea. It only took me 7 months to actually take the time to put them together...

I pretty much love them! I was able to put them all together in a few hours and it was pretty easy.

I love that they have a cut-out in the back for baseboards so that they sit flush against the wall. I also left off the cardboard backing so that the wall color would show through. They feel so much more sturdy than the old Target shelves.

I plan on trimming them out (ya know, jump on the bandwagon!) when I get some time and figure out how, haha.

Meanwhile, I'm just enjoying having more space for storage due to the fact that billy bookshelves have 6 shelves and my old ones had 5.

Yay! :)

New Kitchen Light

Happy happy joy joy. I can actually see in my kitchen at night! For 2 years I have lived with a small, sad kitchen light that barely put off any light. I finally got over to Ikea back in June and while I was there I picked up the Alang fixture to rectify the situation.

This is the only picture I could find that showed the old fixture. Isn't it oogly? It also shows how different my kitchen looks now!

Voila! The new light!

And switched on! I love it!

The new light is fantastic and at $40 it's a steal! :)

Russia Part II

As I mentioned before, in June I went to Russia for two weeks. Here's part two of my adventures there.

We got to enjoy this delicious bruschetta that one of my co-workers made! Sooo good. Everything in Russia tasted fresher.

 This was a dinner we had one night at our hotel. We made it in the room and it was pretty tasty!

This is khachapuri! The most amazing thing ever! It's basically Russian cheesy bread. It has cheese on the top and cheese on the inside and it tastes amazing...

 Everywhere we ate, I pretty much always got a greek salad. My co-worker said I was going to turn into a greek salad, haha. They were so good and fresh!

Here I am in front of Christ the Savior church. It was so beautiful and I was so excited to see it.

The restaurants we ate at always looked so fancy!

Yep, that's a pineapple with rice in it. Haha. It was really good rice!

Oh yeah, we passed by the Star Wars bar, haha! I had to take a picture of it.

One day at work, the Russians laid out this huge spread for us to snack on. It was so good! They also had fresh juice, which was delicious.

We ate at Mcdonald's in downtown Moscow and it was really nice! They had french fries, but they also had potato wedges. I got 2 orders of potato wedges and they were so good!

We also got ice cream cones afterward, they were only 25 rubles - that's less than a dollar! :)

We ate at an American-style diner there and got breakfast one day and it was so good. I pretty much loved everything I ate in Moscow.

I thought this ship was pretty cool.

This was the party boat for sure! As it passed by it was playing loud, dance music and there were groups of people dancing all throughout it. I was jealous! I wanted to get on the party boat.

There were locks all over this bridge and apparently couples put them on and throw the keys in the river.

Walking down the street one day, this woman came up to us and gave us these free, cactus-lime drinks. I liked it, but it was sooooo sugary!!

And here's the view from my room - at 10:30 pm!! :)